Patancheru inscription of Somesvara III

The record

The inscription is at Patancheru, in the Hyderabad country, and is numbered Hd. 1 in P. Sreenivasachar’s collection.¹ It belongs to the reign of the Western Chalukya king Bhulokamalla Somesvara III.¹ It says that, on the king’s oral instructions, his officer Bammanayya, master of robes, made a grant to the astrologer Nanneya Bhatta.¹ The grant gave him the right to collect a measure of grain at Chintamanipura of Pottalakere.¹

The grant was made “on the occasion of the king’s coronation”.¹² This was on the seventh day of the bright half of Phalguna, a Sunday, in Chalukya-Vikrama year 51, the cyclic year Parabhava.¹² The grant rewarded the astrologer for having calculated the auspicious day for the king’s expedition.¹² That day was the ninth day of the bright half of Karttika in the same year.¹²

P. B. Desai worked out the two dates as 26 October 1126 for the expedition and 20 February 1127 for the coronation.¹² He concluded that Somesvara set out on campaign first and was crowned afterwards.¹²

Patancheru and Pottalakere

J. F. Fleet, writing in 1896, did not know of this record.³ He could fix Somesvara III’s accession only within the year 1126–27.³

Fleet listed Pottalakere among the minor capitals named in the records of Jayasimha II.⁴ He identified it with Dannayakanakere in the Bellary district.⁴ He added that the Lingayat Basava-Purana names the town and says that it had seven hundred Jain temples.⁴

Desai, in 1961, concluded that the Patancheru record shows that modern Patancheru is Pottalakere, an early Chalukya capital.² See the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani.

Footnotes

1. P. B. Desai, introduction to P. Sreenivasachar, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (Andhra Pradesh Government Archaeological Series 3, 1961), p. 4, No. 9 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased except for the short phrase quoted. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. Desai, Kannada Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (1961), p. 5, No. 9 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased except for the short phrase quoted. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Fleet, “Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts” (1896), p. 455 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²

4. J. F. Fleet, “Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts”, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency I, pt. II (1896), p. 437 and note 5 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³